Current Events > Elon Musk proposes Fast Travel on earth by rocket (30 minute trips)

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-proposes-city-to-city-travel-by-rocket-right-here-on-earth

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled revised plans to travel to the Moon and Mars at a space industry conference today, but he ended his talk with a pretty incredible promise: using that same interplanetary rocket system for long distance travel on Earth. Musk showed a demonstration of the idea on stage, claiming that it will allow passengers to take "most long distance trips" in just 30 minutes, and go "anywhere on Earth in under an hour" for around the same price of an economy airline ticket.

Cool I could work in America, quick commute to Sweden.
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Nice, i could leave in da morning to fuck my future Australian red headed gf and be back by dinner in one day
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Elon Musk is the kind of person we need more of.
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You could travel around, and never live in the night! (if you have money)
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will it kill the airline industry? Go for it.
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I'm not a rocket engineer, but wouldn't that be kind of expensive and use ungodly amounts of fuel?
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SageHarpuia posted...

I'm not a rocket engineer, but wouldn't that be kind of expensive and use ungodly amounts of fuel?

i'm a rocket engineer

yes

i think elon is throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks

his factory of idealistic fresh-out-of-college students at SpaceX will burn out a few dozen employees trying to make this one stick.
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Elon Musk proposes all kinds of crazy awesome stuff. But we'll see how much ends up happening.

Half an hour to anywhere on Earth is bold af. It's not as simple as "let's just go really fast." When you start reaching those speeds you have to worry about accidentally overcoming gravity and flying off into space. Assuming constant acceleration and deceleration (which is probably an unsafe assumption), you'd have to hit a maximum speed of 22500 m/s to make the trip, which is way faster than you can go anywhere above ground. In fact, you have to go roughly 5600km underground for that to work.

Also, assuming constant acceleration and deceleration, you have to accelerate and decelerate at 25m/s^2 or roughly 2.5 G's for 15 minutes on one direction than another 15 in the other. I dunno as much about that though.

Edit: Wait, I see he actually said an hour for global. Which would be more reasonable but give me a sec to redo the numbers.
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6 m/s^2, which is doable, and about 11km/s, which is still too fast. But you only have to go 3000km underground.
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This is a dumb idea.
Ignoring cost, who the fuck is going to want to take a rocket for vacation versus a 747 in terms of safety?
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

This is a dumb idea.
Ignoring cost, who the fuck is going to want to take a rocket for vacation versus a 747 in terms of safety?

I prefer long plane flights myself. I like being up there.

Elon said that it would end up costing about as much as a standard commercial airplane ticket. Maybe that's true due to the assumptions put into the full & rapid reusability stuff. I don't see how it would otherwise be possible.
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lilORANG posted...

will it kill the airline industry? Go for it.

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btw it's funny how much hate the airline industry gets when in the investment world it's known to be an notoriously unprofitable industry that is incredibly competitive. The profit margins are extremely tiny.
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So, has he moved on from his hyperloop nonsense?
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Esrac posted...

So, has he moved on from his hyperloop nonsense?

Nope, they are still doing that.
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Sativa_Rose posted...

Elon said that it would end up costing about as much as a standard commercial airplane ticket.

fwiw an airplane ticket from DC to japan is like 10,000 to fly coach

so his absurdly optimistic projections still aren't cheap.
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Darkman124 posted...

fwiw an airplane ticket from DC to japan is like 10,000 to fly coach

You mean like $1,500? Higher end looks like $3,000.
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SK8T3R215 posted...

You mean like $1,500? Higher end looks like $3,000.

interesting

i wonder what seating my coworker was taking that his last trip was 10k
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Darkman124 posted...

SK8T3R215 posted...

You mean like $1,500? Higher end looks like $3,000.

interesting

i wonder what seating my coworker was taking that his last trip was 10k

Probably business class.
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Getting real tired of the internet jumping on this guy's dick anytime he says something wild.
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would make sense.

anyway, yes, this does kind of remind us of the credit the airline industry deserves for keeping pricing so low.
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Yeah I just checked prices and there are some in the $900s, probably some really shitty connections/layovers though. Many between $1000 - $2000.

The $10k thing was either an exaggeration or some kind of first class thing.
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pinky0926 posted...

Getting real tired of the internet jumping on this guy's dick anytime he says something wild.

He appeals to the futurist crowd. Aka, the "we don't know much about science and technology but really want cool sci fi shit" crowd.
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Probably because I work for one of his competitors(ULA), but I hear a lot of shit about Elon Musk. So it's always interesting seeing and hearing the 2(probably exaggerated) sides about him.
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COVxy posted...

pinky0926 posted...

Getting real tired of the internet jumping on this guy's dick anytime he says something wild.

He appeals to the futurist crowd. Aka, the "we don't know much about science and technology but really want cool sci fi shit" crowd.

Except Elon has actually delivered on so much. He appeals to a hell of a lot more than just that crowd.
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Literally making a reality game
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FF_Redux posted...

You could travel around, and never live in the night! (if you have money)

Imagine all you could accomplish with all that time you'd save not sleeping since it would never be night for you ever again! Productivity would go up!
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GOATTHlEF posted...

Who would win in a fight Elon Musk or Darkman124

1v1, Final Destination, Items off
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He literally stole this from a Batman comic. >_>
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I am going to Thailand from Philadelphia through Japan with my wife and the total cost for coach is 3500$ booking the tickets 4 months in advance. The 10000$ tickets are either a higher class, he waited until the last possible minute, and/or he is taking a direct flight (which would have cost me and my wife 6k).

FYI a flight to Japan from US east coast is around 18 hours so if Musk has a lot of room for improvement over the current transportation climate
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GOATTHlEF posted...

Who would win in a fight Elon Musk or Darkman124

i don't think he lifts

josifrees posted...

I am going to Thailand from Philadelphia through Japan with my wife and the total cost for coach is 3500$ booking the tickets 4 months in advance. The 10000$ tickets are either a higher class, he waited until the last possible minute, and/or he is taking a direct flight (which would have cost me and my wife 6k).

it was a direct flight, and i think booked pretty late, so that is prob why
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if the vehicle is reusable, the cost per flight is low. fuel is not that expensive once you've solved reusability.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

fuel is not that expensive

the fuel required to travel at hypersonic velocity is pretty expensive
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Darkman124 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

fuel is not that expensive

the fuel required to travel at hypersonic velocity is pretty expensive

most of the costs are in the hardware, not the fuel. solving reusability makes this concept possible at an affordable price for people who need to travel that fast.

Darkman124 posted...

SageHarpuia posted...

I'm not a rocket engineer, but wouldn't that be kind of expensive and use ungodly amounts of fuel?

i'm a rocket engineer

yes

i think elon is throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks

his factory of idealistic fresh-out-of-college students at SpaceX will burn out a few dozen employees trying to make this one stick.

What he's talking about is basically what Concorde did a long time ago that could do shit like complete international trips in 90 minutes or so. So it is economically possible. Concord shut down operations after a nasty crash caused a loss of consumer confidence, but had many other successful flights.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Darkman124 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

fuel is not that expensive

the fuel required to travel at hypersonic velocity is pretty expensive

most of the costs are in the hardware, not the fuel. solving reusability makes this concept possible at an affordable price for people who need to travel that fast.

Lol, you're talking to someone from the actual hypersonic rocket industry. Keep in mind that the payload of a commercial transportation rocket takes up a lot more space than your regular warhead, causing much more drag. And the mass is probably higher as well.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

Darkman124 posted...

SageHarpuia posted...

I'm not a rocket engineer, but wouldn't that be kind of expensive and use ungodly amounts of fuel?

i'm a rocket engineer

yes

i think elon is throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks

his factory of idealistic fresh-out-of-college students at SpaceX will burn out a few dozen employees trying to make this one stick.

What he's talking about is basically what Concorde did a long time ago that could do shit like complete international trips in 90 minutes or so. So it is economically possible. Concord shut down operations after a nasty crash caused a loss of consumer confidence, but had many other successful flights.

it's definitely possible, darkman thinks that just because he tinkers with babby's first circuit board for some defense company's decades-old technology he knows something about reusable boosters and their applications in transport

IIRC Concorde are working on planes with speeds that would cut intercontinental travel times in half, rather than go up in space and back.
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scar the 1 posted...

IIRC Concorde are working on planes with speeds that would cut intercontinental travel times in half, rather than go up in space and back.

Concorde did not literally go into LEO altitudes, but the philosophy of their jets was the same. Go up really really high and then descend really really fast.

You not only go really fast (Concorde jets went Mach 2), but you can also take advantage of the earth's rotation to shorten your journey.

Anyway, I'm just saying Musk isn't "just throwing random shit at the wall" it's literally been done before. Musk is just proposing a more advanced version of it. If there are economic blocks, Musk will either figure it out or just invest in a different way of travelling such as more supersonic trains.
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Didn't Elon say the cost of the fuel is like 0.6% of the cost of the rocket or something? Though that is still at least in the hundreds of thousands I think. It would be interesting to see the actual financial calculations that went into this. They are probably very optimistic. If this becomes a reality, it will surely be quite expensive at first, just like how the first Tesla (the roadster) was over $100k.

It will take mass production and massive economies of scale to get the costs of something like this down to a level comparable with airlines.
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I don't got the numbers in my head, but would Mach 2 get you anywhere in an hour? I was under the impression that they took up that sort of thing again, and that it would result in ~4hour transatlantic flights.
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Also since the Concorde was brought up, there is another company working on supersonic aircraft called Boom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Technology

They plan to have their first flights in 2023 it seems. San Francisco to Tokyo in 5 and a half hours, New York to London in 3 hours 15 minutes, etc.

This would be the first commercially available supersonic flight in like 20 years or so. I am rooting for them.
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It sounds a little crazy but I wouldn't put anything past Musk. It looks like his Hyperloop idea will be seeing the light of day.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132405-what-is-elon-musk-s-hyperloop-the-700mph-subsonic-train-explained
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

it's definitely possible, darkman thinks that just because he tinkers with babby's first circuit board for some defense company's decades-old technology he knows something about reusable boosters and their applications in transport

i do missile design optimization for theoretical hypersonic interceptors and part of the optimization is price

this is very much my area

by removing the hardware loss component spaceX has made significant savings in an area where initial costs were very high. but that doesn't really extrapolate to ultra high-speed planetary surface transport, where many decades of industry have already shorn down those costs

ChromaticAngel posted...

What he's talking about is basically what Concorde did a long time ago that could do s*** like complete international trips in 90 minutes or so. So it is economically possible. Concord shut down operations after a nasty crash caused a loss of consumer confidence, but had many other successful flights.

you are not describing hypersonic velocity flights

i think a spacex driven revival of supersonic commerical flight might well be viable.

for comparison, falcon-9 requires liquid oxygen. concorde used a turbojet engine.
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Darkman124 posted...

SK8T3R215 posted...

You mean like $1,500? Higher end looks like $3,000.

interesting

i wonder what seating my coworker was taking that his last trip was 10k

The one where your airline food consists of sushi served on the supple naked body of a beautiful Japanese young woman.

Wasn't the problem with the Concorde, beyond the accident, it being noisy and shattering windows and stuff? I remember hearing something to that effect before
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